Criticism of the Catholic Church includes observations made about the current or historical Catholic Church, in its actions, teachings, omissions, structure, or nature. Theological disagreements are covered on a denominational basis. Criticisms may regard the concepts of papal primacy and supremacy, or aspects of church structure, governance, and particular practices. Since the Catholic Church is the largest Christian church representing over half of all Christians and one sixth of the world's population, these criticisms may not necessarily represent the majority view of all Christian and non-believers.
Criticism of the Catholic Church in previous centuries was more closely related to theological and ecclesiological disputes. The Protestant Reformation (16th century Europe) came about due to abuses of church practices by corrupt clergy in addition to these same theological disputes. Political disputes compounded the theological grievances between Protestants and Catholics and to this day the debate begun at the Reformation has been reflected in the diversity of Christian denominations. Some contemporary criticisms of the Catholic Church relate to philosophy and culture e.g., Christianity vs. humanism.
Read more about Criticism Of The Catholic Church: Criticism of Catholic Actions in History
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“Every country gets the circus it deserves. Spain gets bullfights. Italy gets the Catholic Church. America gets Hollywood.”
—Erica Jong (b. 1942)
“The critic lives at second hand. He writes about. The poem, the novel, or the play must be given to him; criticism exists by the grace of other men’s genius. By virtue of style, criticism can itself become literature. But usually this occurs only when the writer is acting as critic of his own work or as outrider to his own poetics, when the criticism of Coleridge is work in progress or that of T.S. Eliot propaganda.”
—George Steiner (b. 1929)
“The visual is sorely undervalued in modern scholarship. Art history has attained only a fraction of the conceptual sophistication of literary criticism.... Drunk with self-love, criticism has hugely overestimated the centrality of language to western culture. It has failed to see the electrifying sign language of images.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)
“In fact what America expects of its citizens and what the Catholic Church expects of the faithful are sometimes so different that they lead to an enormous ker-KLUNK between democracy and theology.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“The church is a sort of hospital for men’s souls, and as full of quackery as the hospital for their bodies. Those who are taken into it live like pensioners in their Retreat or Sailor’s Snug Harbor, where you may see a row of religious cripples sitting outside in sunny weather.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)